In the industry of architectural accent assemblies, and more particularly to panels which are used to cover fixed structures such as building walls and ceilings or dressing structural columns, there have been many methods for attaching such accent panels to the fixed structures.
The most common method for mounting wall panels involves the use of a hook/slot mechanism whereby hooks on the panel are coupled to corresponding holes or slots on the support member or structure. Referring to FIG. 1a, the typical prior art panel has a hook that can be secured to the support member by slidably coupling the hook to the slot in the support member. This attachment method utilizes gravity to hold the panel in place. However, certain vertical displacement of the panel is required for both installation and removal of the panel. Similar to this method is one using a pin/keyhole-type arrangement. Referring to FIG. 1b, either the panel or support member will have a pin, with the other component having a keyhole and adjacent slot. To assemble, the pin will penetrate the keyhole and then be slidably coupled to the slot for locking the assembly in place. Like the hook/slot mechanism, the pin/keyhole mechanism requires vertical displacement of the panel to engage and disengage the pin with the corresponding keyhole.
With both the hook/slot and pin/keyhole mechanisms, vertical displacement of the panels can be inhibited by the positioning of contiguous panels or other components, thereby making it difficult to remove single panels when access to the underlying fixed structure is required. In such instances, the typical prior art solution for wall panels has been the use of a snap fastener mechanism which allows the panel to be releasably secured to the support structure. An exemplary snap fastener mechanism is depicted in FIG. 1c. For ceiling panels, the typical prior art solution has been the use of a vertically-oriented torsion spring mechanism whereby a torsion spring engages a slot in the support structure and uses the spring's stiffness to hold the panel in place. An exemplary embodiment of a torsion spring mechanism is shown in FIG. 1d. However, while both the snap fastener and torsion spring mechanisms allow for relatively easy panel removal, these mechanisms have limited use where the panels are under heavy environmental (e.g., heavy winds, etc.) or material (e.g., wire conduit, etc.) loads.